


Snapshots

by coloredlights



Category: Wicked - Gregory Maguire
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-12
Updated: 2008-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-21 15:17:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/226630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coloredlights/pseuds/coloredlights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Imagined snippets from Mr. Maguire's cutting-room floor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snapshots

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Jan/Feb 2008 Challenge at gelphie_lovers, and in honor of lfae's birthday. Bookverse, with the snippets arranged in chronological order and spanning pretty much the whole novel.

_Eschew_  
Nanny held the tiny green body over a basin of water, but barely, for the girl wriggled so much that Nanny could hardly keep hold of her. Melena watched, chewing her pinlobble leaves. Elphaba finally escaped Nanny’s clutches, but in her short fall, she hit the edge of the basin, sloshing water across her arm. The skin immediately blistered. Instead of screaming, the baby extended the arm towards Nanny, who could swear there was a reproachful expression in the girl’s dark eyes.

 _Apogee_  
No matter how many times Elphaba circled the fringes of Shiz society, she felt herself no match for the laws, immutable as gravity, holding her at a certain distance from the epicenter – from Galinda.

 _Circumspect_  
After the first cup of mineral tea, Boq forgot to smile charmingly in case Miss Elphaba happened to describe his smile to Miss Galinda. He found himself smiling, charmingly or not, because Elphaba had made him forget.

 _Spoonerism_  
Elphaba fidgeted all through class, uncharacteristically, unable to determine the source of her own discomfort. Not until Galinda inquired, that evening, as to whether Elphaba knew the whereabouts of a particular undergarment did Elphaba realize what must have happened. She checked her attire the next time she was in the bathroom and resolved to have a chat with Ama Clutch about taking the necessary care when putting away the laundry.

 _Melange_  
Grommetik whirred about the room, dusting every surface. Elphaba scrutinized the blur of machinery out of the corner of her eye. She couldn’t acclimate herself to the idea of that conglomeration of gears, cogs, springs, and screws containing a brain or a soul, but then again, she supposed that was how most people felt about her.

 _Persimmon_  
 _Green apple_ , Glinda thought, before rolling her eyes at herself. _Don’t be ridiculous; that would be her absolute LAST choice of scent. It’s a fruit, though; sweet but tart, even a little spicy._ She pondered for a few more minutes, until a noise in the hall made her bolt upright and flee to the other side of the room. Elphaba entered, flinging her bookbag onto her bed, completely unaware that it had landed in the exact spot on her pillow where her roommate’s face had been buried only seconds previously.

 _Gambit_  
Tired of Elphaba’s constant dodging, of her endless ability to deflect conversation, Glinda developed a plan. She practiced until she was confident, and then she carried out her mission. Interrupting Elphaba’s studying one night, Glinda asked about her childhood, about religion, about love – in short, every subject that had ever made Elphaba gather her things and run from the room. This time, however, a silent spell turned the lock on the door.

 _Ricochet_  
“Do you realize,” Glinda asked Crope and Tibbett, “that most of Ozian society will find your relationship improper?”

The boys glanced at each other, then at Elphaba’s arm, which was across the back of Glinda’s seat, and at her hand, which was inconspicuously stroking the ends of blonde hair.

“You don’t say,” Crope responded. “It’s certainly a good thing you aren’t most of society, then.”

A flush rose in Elphaba’s cheeks.

 _Rejoinder_  
A little drunk on night air and wine, Glinda leaned over and kissed Elphaba.

After only a moment, Elphaba pulled back, turning her face to her shoulder. “Come to your senses, if you please.” Her tone was not quite sharp.

Glinda caught Elphaba’s chin in her hand and turned the green face back to her own. “My senses, Miss Elphaba, have never been more present.”

Glinda delighted briefly in the shock on Elphaba’s face before closing her eyes and bringing their lips together again.

 _Akimbo_  
The first time that she and Glinda shared a bed, Elphaba feared that her bony frame would somehow damage Glinda’s soft curves and deflate the careful bubble of a world they had created for themselves alone.

 _Ephemeral_  
Glinda’s tongue traced designs on green skin, and Elphaba quivered at the touch. She knew saliva wouldn’t burn her, but for a moment she thrilled at the thought of Glinda’s patterns scarred permanently across her flesh. Instead, the dampness evaporated and her skin dried, leaving Elphaba shivering and bare.

 _Reticent_  
There were some things that Elphaba wanted to broadcast to the whole of Oz, such as the increasingly insignificant biological differences between animals and Animals, and all of her classmates were well aware that she was hardly shy about correcting their ill-informed assumptions. As her thin fingertip traced a path across Glinda’s collarbone, however, Elphaba could not imagine wanting anyone else to know about the freckles scattered across pale shoulders, the muted points of bones in softly curved hips, or anything else she had learned in the past few hours.

 _Cataract_  
Alone in her first tiny, unmapped apartment, Elphaba watched her classmates dancing in her mind’s eye. Crope and Tibbett, waltzing, groping each other when they thought no one was looking and laughing uproariously when it turned out someone was. Fiyero, standing along a wall with Boq, who held a glass of punch and gazed fixedly across the room. Elphaba followed his line of sight, but all she could see was a blur of light pink and blonde. She blinked to clear her vision before she realized that her memory, not her eyes, was responsible for the fog.

 _Maudlin_  
Glinda wished, sometimes, that she had been able to convince Elphaba to go with the others to the Philosophy Club. Despite what she knew had happened to Tibbett, she wished she had been able to see Elphaba uncontrolled, swept up in the tides like the rest of them instead of swimming upstream.

 _Bisque_  
Once, Elphaba managed to capture a few crayfish ( _not_ Crayfish – she checked) from a stream on the outskirts of the Emerald City. Back in her shoebox apartment in the worst part of town, alone as always, she wrapped them in foil and cooked them over a fire. She wished she had the ingredients and utensils to make a proper soup, but joining the crowd at the market was out of the question. She remembered Nanny grinding lobster shells into a fine paste and telling her, “This is what you do with sea creatures that ain’t good enough for market – gets all the flavor out.”

Elphaba winced as the metaphor smacked her in the head. She stuck to vegetables after that.

 _Sojourn_  
Ever since she was a little girl, Glinda Upland had dreamed of her wedding day. She had planned the dress, the flowers, and the food down to the last detail. As she took her first step down the aisle of the Unionist chapel, however, she could hardly keep her thoughts on the man waiting for her by the altar. Instead, she found herself scanning the guests’ finery for black capes and pointed hats, somehow unable to believe that her childhood dream was coming true without Elphaba.

 _Leitmotif_  
On her first tracking mission after months of training, Fae nearly lost her target. She spun at a sound she thought she’d never hear again – a bright tinkle of laughter, newly underscored with a note of falseness – and whirled back around just as the target disappeared into an alley.

 _Pantomime_  
Elphaba was not. If Fae stopped going through the motions, if she kept still, her body would collapse like an unbalanced house of cards, leaving only a mask amongst the fragments.

 _Schadenfreude_  
She was certain Fiyero could hear the tightening of her voice, the forced nonchalance, the first time she asked about Glinda. She threw in other names as halfhearted distractions and could never quite believe he hadn’t seen Fae relishing Elphaba’s pain as she considered Glinda’s life, complete even without Elphaba.

 _Skullduggery_  
Maybe it was only because her entire life was hidden, or maybe it had to do with the illegitimacy of their relationship, but Elphaba wished for darker shadows and thicker walls as her skin slipped against Fiyero’s. She felt as though she’d crept off the path of her life and taken cover in a thicket, away from the unsettling brightness of sparkles and jewels.

 _Arcane  
Ironic_, Elphaba thought. Years of studying biochemical diagrams, data, and formulas, and here she was, confronted by and dependent on the only kind of symbols she’d never considered worth her time. She slammed the Grimmerie shut.

 _Cavalcade_  
In the aftermath of the twister, people bustled about with their heads down, talking in hushed tones as if the storm could hear them and return. After a few days, the mood began to lift, and one Munchkinlander farmer relaxed enough to gaze off into the western sky while he leaned on his pitchfork. The shadows he saw - one larger and composed entirely of lines and angles, the others small and unnaturally awkward in their flight – gave him chills, and he gathered his many children into the house.

 _Popinjay_  
For most of her youth, Elphaba wished fervently that Nessarose would shut up about souls, the afterlife, morals, the Unnamed God – which were virtually the only subjects Nessa ever discussed. And yet, staring at the forbidding shack of a house that had fallen from the sky and silenced her sister for good, the Wicked Witch listened for echoes of that empty preaching.

 _Gimcrack_  
Glinda was right, Elphaba knew. They were only shoes, which she could never even wear because her bright skin would render the beautiful sparkles gaudy. She did wonder, though, what it would be like to have something, or someone, to help her keep her balance.

 _Zeitgeist_  
“Elphaba lives!” proclaimed the wall. Glinda, peering through the curtains of her carriage, thought she saw a pointed shadow obscure the letters, but when she looked again, nothing remained but ragged black paint on green bricks.


End file.
